The following column appears in the August edition of The Business Monthly, serving Howard and Anne Arundel counties.

Last year, there were three murders at the Columbia Mall – a double-homicide outside the mall and a murder in the food court.

The murders of young men by other young men shocked the community and led to beefed up police presence.

In 2022, there were four murders in Howard County; in 2023, there were five. Last year, there were 10. Even then, 10 is not a high number for a county of 330,000 people but shocking nonetheless where crime rates have remained relatively low.

Howard County State’s Attorney Rich Gibson Jr. Official photo

The high-profile double-homicide led State’s Attorney Rich Gibson Jr. to decide to prosecute the case himself. It’s an action he’s taken only a handful of times in his six-and-a-half years as the county’s top prosecutor, given how all-consuming a case like that can be.

But Gibson insists, “Howard County is a safe place. Numerically speaking, just by the data,” he said in a long-interview July 14. “We are an extraordinarily safe space. Crime is down across the country, right? So just generally speaking, per the numbers, mathematically speaking, crime is trending downward everywhere. Howard County is no exception.”

He points out that both of these fatal mall shootings “were targeted events. The people that were at the mall knew each other, as you said, and there was some animosity that existed between them and they chose this horrible way of resolving that animosity. I think it is scary because the mall is a place a lot of people congregate.”

Disbelief

But lots of people don’t believe crime is down, I tell him, regardless of what crime statistics might show.

As state’s attorney, Gibson says he has to address “how people feel but also give them a sense of what is [fact].”

“A single crime is too much crime, and we hope to get to a place where crime is even lower, right? Every offense we take very, very seriously. But at the same point in time, it’s true that crime is numerically down. What you’re seeing, in particular with juveniles is that while crime is numerically down, the types of crimes that our youth are engaging in are more egregious crimes and so those crimes resonate in a more significant way with the community.”

A young-looking 49, Gibson is no casual observer of violent crime and death. He’s been a prosecuting attorney for 20 years. That includes 13 years in Baltimore City, where he spent five years on the homicide unit followed by the major investigations unit where he wound up supervising a team of attorneys focused on violent repeat offenders.

In 2018, a Democrat, Gibson was elected Howard County’s first African-American state’s attorney, easily winning the general election with 62% of the vote. In 2022, he got a free ride to re-election. He had no opponent in the Democratic primary or the general election. A familiar figure at political events in the county, Gibson is planning to run again next year.

Loves the job

“I love the job! It’s immensely rewarding. I get to serve my community. I get to try to keep my community safe. I get to shape what justice looks like in this space. It’s an area that I have a degree of expertise in and so I’m comfortable in this space, but no two days are the same…. I have a great team around me that allows me to create what I hope to be the kind of public safety that the community enjoys.”

It’s not like there’s no crime in Howard County. Otherwise, Gibson wouldn’t need a $14 million budget with a staff of 95 people, including 48 attorneys operating in the circuit and district courts.

With no significant public controversies during his tenure, Gibson shows no signs of worry about his reelection, based on his campaign finance report. He only raised $1,000 last year, and has only $41,000 in his campaign account, a meager sum for a countywide race. And no, he has no interest in running for the open county executive seat, a common political career path in neighboring Prince George’s County.

With no term limits for them in the Maryland Constitution, state’s attorneys in some jurisdictions stay in the job for decades. Scott Shellenberger, 66, in Baltimore County is serving in his fourth term, despite a close election last time and a younger opponent next year. He was preceded by Sandra O’Connor who served 32 years in the job. John McCarthy in Montgomery County is also in his fourth term as state’s attorney there.

Representing his fellows

Gibson is coming off five years as president of the Maryland State’s Attorneys Association, representing the 24 elected local prosecutors. Gibson agreed that it was both an honor and a chore.

“It was a real honor, because you get a chance to represent the entire state.” But it’s not always easy to find consensus. “You know, you have rural, urban, suburban, Democrat, Republican, very conservative, very liberal, and you’re trying to find consensus amongst the 24 electeds. Obviously, dealing with 24 electeds, you’re dealing with strong personalities and strong thoughts.”

“Despite the differing opinions on public safety, regardless of political affiliation, regardless of rural, urban, suburban, there was a lot of common ground because on public safety, we are a little more cohesive than on some other issues.”

Body-worn cameras for police, for instance, which Gibson supports, are also an issue of resources for both police and prosecutors. Not only is the equipment costly, but it also creates a lot more work for police and for prosecutors.

Twenty years ago, a robbery prosecution might involve four witnesses, says Gibson – a victim, another witness, a police officer or two. Today, such a case might also involve technical experts on cell phones, surveillance and body-worn cameras.

“So, the density of today’s cases is so much greater than the density was a decade or two ago. And so is the amount of work that a prosecutor must do per case.”

Juvenile justice

How to handle juvenile crime is another thorny issue for prosecutors.

“The leadership of DJS [Department of Juvenile Services] has had a philosophy under the prior secretary that was really a “Don’t touch them, low interaction mindset and model that I think really does our youth a disservice.”

“Governor Moore has changed who’s at the helm, and I’m hoping that new leadership is more in line with the philosophy that says, we have an opportunity to intervene with these kids, and we’re going to do so in a meaningful way. We’re gonna target the underlying root causes. We’re gonna get involved and grab hold of them now with the goal of reshaping them so that we don’t see them tomorrow.

“It is my hope, and I believe the hope of every prosecutor in the state to not deal with kids more than once. And certainly not to see them when they’re adults, because if you don’t train them and teach them that their actions have consequences, if you don’t teach them that there’s a better way to handle problems, if we don’t teach them the right way to interact as a member of our community, the answer will be, you’re going to commit that crime as an adult, and there’s going to be a very different consequence awaiting you. Everyone suffers. There’s another harm that’s on our community. We haven’t done right by that kid.”

Speaking of kids, Gibson has three of them with lots of photos on his desk of them and his wife, physician Dr. Carissa Guishard-Gibson. They live in Ellicott City.

The post Despite recent murders, Howard County is ‘an extraordinarily safe place,’ says top prosecutor appeared first on MarylandReporter.com.

By SAM GAUNTT

The low-lying coastal community of Crisfield, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, lost a federal grant aimed at preventing flooding and managing sea-level rise, while universities and research institutions across the state face extensive funding cuts.

Disappearing, too, are federal incentives to move to clean energy sources — replaced by President Donald Trump’s effort to repeal state laws aimed at addressing climate change.

Meanwhile, scores of employees at federal environmental agencies, including many from Maryland, have already lost or could soon lose their jobs.

All of that is happening for one simple reason that U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins spelled out May 8 on Fox Business.

Under the Trump administration, “We’re not doing that climate change, you know, crud anymore,” Rollins said.

Trump has long called climate change “a hoax,” and since returning to office in January, his administration has treated it as that. This about-face in federal climate policy is impacting almost every aspect of Maryland’s efforts to address environmental and climate issues, as well as those of states across the country, environmental leaders said. 

Climate change experts and state government officials warn that these funding cuts and other federal actions could potentially set Maryland’s climate efforts back years. 

The changes come at a delicate time for the state’s environment, regardless of the federal government. 

Maryland entered its annual legislative session at the beginning of the year facing a $3 billion budget deficit, leading Gov. Wes Moore to direct the state to cut more than $250 million from its four environmental agencies.

On top of that, the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science recently downgraded the Chesapeake Bay’s health from a “C+” to a “C” in its annual report card due to worsening weather patterns.

In an interview, Adam Ortiz, deputy secretary of the Maryland Department of the Environment, said the Trump administration has put the state’s climate, environmental and clean energy projects “on the chopping block.”

“The biggest exposure and liability is to everyday people,” he said.

The money 

Crisfield, a city of about 2,500 in Somerset County, lost out on $36 million in flood-prevention funding when the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) canceled its Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program in April. That was just one small part of the Trump administration’s government-wide effort to slash climate-related funding.

Canceling that one FEMA program cost the entire Chesapeake Bay watershed nearly $1 billion in federal funding, the Chesapeake Bay Journal reported.

FEMA, in a since-deleted news release, called the grant program “wasteful and ineffective.” But Rep. Sarah Elfreth, whose 3rd District includes flood-prone communities in Anne Arundel County, begged to differ.

“Now, towns like Crisfield in Maryland and Baltimore and dozens of communities across this nation rely on this funding to ward off the very real and very devastating effects of flooding,” she said on the House floor in April. “Flooding will continue to devastate communities, even if the president does not believe in climate change.”

Elfreth has already been proven to be correct. Through July 15, the National Weather Service issued 3,045 flood warnings this year – more than any year in modern history. This summer’s floods range from those that led to a state of emergency in Western Maryland in May and the flash floods that hit the northern D.C. area on July 19 to the July 4 torrent in Texas that has claimed more than 130 lives.

FEMA’s decision to cut the disaster mitigation program hasn’t gone unchallenged. On July 16, a coalition of 20 states, including Maryland, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Massachusetts disputing the agency’s authority to cut the program without prior approval from Congress and seeking a permanent injunction to restore its funding.

In a statement on July 16, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown said that it is “the worst possible time to cut life-saving disaster preparedness funding.”

“Any community in Maryland can be struck by a devastating natural disaster that forever changes the lives of those who live there,” Brown said.

The Trump administration isn’t just cutting flood-control funding. Over the last six months, Trump has sought to cancel more than $23.3 billion in clean energy grants nationwide, according to the Climate Program Portal.

Trump is also seeking to cut billions in funding for federal environmental agencies, including a roughly $2 billion proposed cut to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a proposed almost $5 billion cut to the Environmental Protection Agency. 

Because federal agencies are picking up less of the bill, the state has been forced to find new ways to generate revenue to cover spending on climate, environmental and energy projects, said Ortiz, the EPA’s former top administrator for the mid-Atlantic region. One way has been by increasing the cost of inspection and enforcement fees that haven’t been raised in decades.

“The state is trying to pick up a lot of the slack, since the federal government has abandoned its support role,” Ortiz said.

The UMD Center for Environmental Science hasn’t yet lost any grants of which it was the primary recipient, but it has lost some grants of which it was a co-lead or secondary recipient, said Dave Nemazie, the center’s interim vice president for administration and finance.

More than anything, Nemazie said, the center has seen an “overall slowdown” in receiving awards and in communication with federal partners.

He said the center, which typically receives about 60% of its external funding from the federal government, is facing a 25% reduction in grants and awards for the 2026 fiscal year.

“The spigot is not flowing as fast,” he said. “Communication has been much more complicated than it has in the past.”

Kristin Reilly, director of the Maryland-based Choose Clean Water Coalition, said funding cuts could have a “major impact” on Maryland’s climate restoration efforts.

“Pretty much anything that you’re doing at the state level, there is a need for some level of federal investment that’s been counted on, that’s been incorporated and calculated into the state budgets,” she said. “If that isn’t going to continue, we’re going to have to make some really tough choices and have some really serious conversations, especially here in Maryland.”

The policies

The recently passed “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” Trump’s signature policy effort, will have broad impacts on climate change and environmental justice funding and other programs. 

The budget reconciliation bill, signed into law by Trump in early July, removed incentives for clean energy, electric vehicles and efficient homes, which the bill describes as “Green New Deal subsidies.”

Marisa Olszewski, the Maryland League of Conservation Voters’ manager for environment and community, described the current landscape as an “assault” on clean energy.

The U.S. is throwing away its position as a global leader in clean energy, said Olszewski, who is married to Rep. Johnny Olszewski, D-Sparrows Point.

“Once you pull back on that, it’s not like the rest of the world is going to wait for us to come back around and develop the technology, or put out the research,” she said. “They’re going to go ahead and do it without us.”

Many of Trump’s executive actions have also taken aim at clean energy programs. 

In April, he signed an executive order titled “Protecting American Energy From State Overreach,” which ordered the attorney general to immediately identify and challenge the legality of state climate laws. 

“Many states have enacted, or are in the process of enacting, burdensome and ideologically motivated ‘climate change’ or energy policies that threaten American energy dominance and our economic and national security,” Trump said.

That executive order never mentioned Maryland, but it took issue with a carbon trading program in California that is similar to one formed by a group of states, including Maryland.

In addition, the executive order could lead to a federal attack on Maryland’s Climate Solutions Now Act of 2022, which sets statewide greenhouse gas emissions goals, energy efficiency standards for new buildings and other climate-related measures. County-level actions — such as a Montgomery County law banning gas appliances in new buildings — could also be challenged.

“Should the U.S. attorney general choose to target either the state of Maryland, Maryland’s counties, or both, the effect on Maryland’s energy landscape as well as local control could be dramatic,” Dominic J. Butchko, director of intergovernmental relations at the Maryland Association of Counties, wrote in a blog post shortly after Trump issued that executive order.

Trump signed a different executive order in January, which halted all federal approval of new wind farms, and has sought to roll back or cancel wind energy projects across the country.

While the Maryland Offshore Wind Project located off the coast of Ocean City, one of the state’s signature clean energy projects, had already been approved by the federal government, it too has been caught up in administrative hurdles. 

On July 7, the EPA informed Maryland regulators the state’s air quality permit for the project had an error, and ordered them to revise and reissue the permit. The state does not plan to reissue the permit, Maryland Environment Secretary Serena McIlwain wrote in a July 17 letter to the agency.

The people 

Federal and state agencies haven’t just lost money. They’ve lost people. 

Few states are more at risk from the federal government’s sweeping layoffs than Maryland, where more than 6% of residents are employed by the federal government.

Maryland is home to almost 230,000 federal workers, the third-largest number in the U.S. Among those workers are scores of scientists, researchers and environmental experts. 

NOAA and the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center call Maryland home. Other agencies, including the EPA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy have sizable presences in the state.

These agencies, including the EPA, play a key role in helping oversee and fund many of the state’s most extensive environmental and climate projects, such as its efforts to restore the Chesapeake Bay.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced in May that the agency will cut staffing levels to those it had during the Ronald Reagan administration in the 1980s. On July 18, the agency announced it would shutter its research and development office and implement a large-scale “reduction in force,” which, combined with previous personnel changes, would decrease the agency’s workforce by about 23%. 

More than 500 Maryland residents worked for the EPA in 2024, according to data from the federal Office of Personnel Management.

Ortiz said changes in federal departments and agencies will impact Maryland’s ability to carry out environmental work, as many of its authorities are delegated to the state by the federal government.

“Often we do need a thumbs up, a nod or an approval to carry out various programs,” he said. “That responsiveness will be slower. Areas that we’ve been investing in to try to fix longstanding challenges are going to be weakened and slowed because we don’t have that partnership.”

Nemazie, of the UMD Center for Environmental Science, said the center has implemented a hiring freeze while it works to cut its costs. About 40% of its staff is supported solely by external grants and contracts, he said.

Some federal cuts targeting environment-focused positions, however, have been overturned in the courts. 

The administration halted funding to the federal AmeriCorps program in April, which impacted hundreds of Maryland workers, including dozens at the Maryland Conservation Corps. But in June, a federal judge in Maryland ordered the Trump administration to reinstate funding for AmeriCorps positions.

Ortiz said the state is working to make “smart and strategic decisions” on how to handle federal cuts and policy changes. As state officials make plans, new events are unfolding at “an almost hourly pace,” he said.

“We want to react, but we also don’t want to overreact,” he said. “These are uncharted waters. So there are no easy answers, and there’s certainly no playbook.”

The post Trump administration policies pose threats to Maryland’s ambitious climate efforts appeared first on MarylandReporter.com.

By RACHEL MCCREA

Maryland touts its climate goals as some of the most ambitious in the country. The state is required by state law to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 60% by 2031 and hit net zero carbon emissions by 2045. 

Legislation passed in 2022 and a pollution reduction plan published in late 2023 lay out a road map to reaching these goals. 

But what does this plan involve, and what does it mean for Marylanders? Here’s a closer look.

The Electricity Sector: Transitioning to Renewables

What are the policies? 

• Maryland’s current climate plan includes two longstanding energy policies. One, called the Renewable Portfolio Standard, sets a goal to have just over half of the state’s electricity come from renewables by 2030. Maryland is also a member of a multistate carbon trading program, called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, that limits power plant emissions and requires plants to pay for each ton of carbon dioxide they emit. Money from auctioning off these emissions “allowances” is reinvested in state energy programs and incentives. 
• Legislation passed since the 2022 Climate Solutions Now Act has expanded goals for offshore wind and energy storage, and made a community solar program permanent. 
• The POWER Act sets a goal of 8,500 megawatts of offshore wind by 2031. That would be equal to over half of Maryland’s electricity sales in 2023.   
• A 2023 bill established the Maryland Energy Storage Program and set a goal of 3,000 megawatts of energy storage in Maryland by 2034. The state legislature passed a bill this year that includes a process for procuring batteries that would store energy for later use, including possible energy from renewable sources. 
• A community solar pilot program became permanent in 2023. The legislation requires that 40% of a community solar system’s energy goes to low- to moderate-income Marylanders.
• Gov. Wes Moore signed an executive order in 2024 that requires climate plans from every state agency, calls for a plan to reach 100% clean electricity in Maryland by 2035 and pushes for a new regional limit on power plant emissions through the multistate carbon trading program. 

Who’s paying for it? 

It depends on the program. 

• To reach the state’s goal of 50% of electricity coming from renewables, electricity suppliers have to buy renewable energy credits from producers. The cost of renewable energy credits is passed on to Marylanders through their utility bills. Companies can pay a fee instead of buying a renewable energy credit, and that money flows to the Strategic Energy Investment Fund, where it’s funneled into funding for electric vehicle chargers, renewables, community solar and other clean energy projects. 
• A regional carbon trading program funds energy projects and grants. When power plants buy CO2 allowances at auctions, that money goes to the Strategic Energy Investment Fund.
• The battery storage legislation passed this spring is twofold: utility companies would construct some storage and other developers would build the rest. 
• The POWER Act has the Department of General Services handle offshore wind purchasing. That makes sure the cost isn’t reflected in Marylanders’s utility bills. 

What progress has been made so far? 

• The state achieved less than half of its renewable energy goal in 2023, with suppliers paying fines to close the gap. 
• The Moore administration has been distributing between $100 million and $150 million annually to clean energy projects. Grants from the administration in 2023 went to a host of programs focused on clean energy, decarbonization, and energy efficiency. Funding comes from the carbon trading and renewable energy credit programs.
• The regional carbon trading program is in the middle of being reviewed, and states are working on a stricter emissions limit. Since the program began in the mid-2000s, Maryland power plants covered by the regional carbon trading program have cut their emissions by 62% and the state has received over $1 billion. 
• Maryland ranks low among states on the regional grid for wind power generation, with most of its in-state wind energy provided by wind farms in Western Maryland.  
• One offshore wind project in Maryland has federal approval, and would be built off the coast of Ocean City — but the Trump administration’s opposition to offshore wind has thrown a wrench in new project development. 
• The Maryland Energy Storage Program was in the research stage as of the end of 2024. 
• The community solar pilot program became permanent in 2023. 

The Transportation Sector: Promoting EVs 

What are the policies? 

• Maryland is building its network of electric vehicle chargers. 
• The state is aiming to dramatically increase the number of electric vehicles on the roads to 1.1 million by 2031. Legislation sets the goal for all new car sales to be electric or hybrid by 2035. It has a similar law for medium and heavy-duty trucks, but an executive order from Moore this spring allowed enforcement of both programs to be pushed back past model year 2028.    
• The state is also required to transition the state fleet and school buses to EVs. 
• A popular state excise tax credit for EVs lasted only a month before it was sold out, according to state officials. 
• The Maryland Department of Transportation is aiming to cut back on “vehicle miles traveled” by 20% per capita by 2050. It’s promoting development near transit stops to encourage public transit use. Meanwhile, Baltimore’s Red Line project and the Purple Line in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties will expand mass transit.  

Who’s paying for it? 

• The state’s EV charging buildout is set to receive $63 million from the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Plan, but the Federal Highway Administration paused access to funding earlier this year. Maryland has already been approved for $49.5 million, but had only obligated $14.7 million before the pause. It’s one of several states suing the Trump administration over the pause in funding access.
• In early 2024, Moore put $23 million in grants toward charging infrastructure. The state EV charging rebate and the EV excise tax credit receive millions of dollars from the Strategic Energy Investment Fund.
• The state has a grant program for electric school buses. 

What progress has been made so far?

• The first round of federally funded public EV chargers are expected to be up and running by next spring. Tesla and other private companies are also installing chargers in the state.
• There were about 1,500 public charging stations available across Maryland as of the end of April, with almost 4,400 total charging ports. Maryland’s current buildout through the federal EV charging program will add 22 new stations by spring of next year, with a goal of 51 in total.
• There were just over 135,000 registered EVs in Maryland as of April, up from under 15,000 in 2020. The state tax credit for EVs is out of funding for this fiscal year but will restart this summer. 
• As of last fall, EVs made up 12% of new sales and 2.3% of all vehicles in Maryland. Electric vehicles are supposed to make up 43% of car sales in 2027 under Advanced Clean Cars II, but enforcement of that rule has been temporarily relaxed. 
• The Moore administration’s executive order on EV legislation established a working group tasked with figuring out the best way to implement Maryland’s clean car goals. 
• This is the second year Maryland has required that new school buses be electric. But state officials expect all of the state’s school districts to get waivers to that new rule, as they did last year. Maryland had 242 electric school buses last summer, and state officials said Maryland is ahead of many other states with school bus electrification. However, the costs and challenges of transitioning to electric buses have led districts in Montgomery County and Baltimore to put their EV bus programs on pause. 
• The state’s six-year Consolidated Transportation Program includes funding for electrification, public transportation, pedestrian safety, bike trails and development near public transit. 

The Construction Sector: Decarbonization and Energy Efficiency

What are the policies? 

• The Climate Solutions Now Act called for large buildings to reduce emissions by 20% by 2030, and reach net zero by 2040. Since then, Maryland’s new Building Energy Performance Standards have faced pushback from building groups. The state legislature modified them this session, exempting hospitals, factories and emergency power to buildings like data centers. It also set up a study to help the legislature decide where to take the standards in future years and added an annual fee to cover costs associated with the program. Building owners in Montgomery County, which has its own building standards, do not have to comply with the state framework.
• New homes have to either have an EV charger or be ready to have EV chargers installed. 
• Utility companies are required to provide energy efficiency programs and incentives to their customers under the EmPOWER Maryland Program. Companies have to meet energy savings goals, and recent updates also called for emissions reduction goals. 
• New rules suggested by the 2023 climate plan would seek to reduce emissions that come from heating buildings, in part by requiring new building heating systems to be zero emissions. 

Who’s paying for it? 

• EmPOWER Maryland is funded by a charge on Marylanders’ electricity and gas bills. Marylanders paid a surcharge between about $7 and $11 for EmPOWER in 2024. 
• Building owners and developers would have to pay for changes required under the state’s new Building Energy Performance Standards.

What progress has been made so far? 

• The Building Energy Performance Standards were adopted in December 2024 and updated in the spring of 2025. Right now, the regulations cover emissions from the buildings themselves (“net direct” emissions), with final energy use standards expected to come around 2027.
• The EmPOWER Maryland Program has been around since 2008, and was updated in recent years to take greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals into account. 
• The Maryland Department of the Environment is working on the clean heat rules. 

The Industrial Sector: Phasing out Pollutants and Managing Leaks

What are the policies? 

• The cement industry in Maryland — the largest industrial emitter of greenhouse gases — has a voluntary goal of net zero emissions by 2050. Legislation was passed in 2023 to mitigate the environmental impacts of cement and concrete used in state-funded construction. 
• The state is phasing out hydrofluorocarbons. They’re used in refrigeration, air conditioning, aerosols and foams. State regulations aim to cut hydrofluorocarbon emissions 25% by 2030.
• The state has rules to prevent methane leaks from natural gas infrastructure. 
• Maryland has regulations to cut methane emissions from landfills. It’s also trying to reduce the amount of food waste in landfills, and a 2017 executive order outlines a waste management policy that focuses on reducing, reusing and recycling waste.

Who’s paying for it? 

• The state’s concrete and cement procurement legislation (called Buy Clean Maryland) receives state funding.
• The Strategic Energy Investment Fund put $1.76 million toward energy efficiency grants for the industrial, commercial and agricultural sectors in 2023.    

What progress has been made so far? 

• Under the Buy Clean Maryland Act, cement and concrete manufacturers had to submit reports to the state detailing the environmental impact of their products by the end of 2024. This legislation only applies to construction that receives state funding. 
• The hydrofluorocarbon phaseout is on schedule, and state regulations on methane emissions and landfill emissions are in effect. 

Farms, Forests and Land Use 

What are the state’s climate policies for farming, forestry and land use? 

• Agricultural emissions comprised 4% of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2020. Those emissions come from cattle, animal waste and fertilizer. 
• Maryland has nutrient management regulations, and the Maryland Department of Agriculture helps farmers pay for manure management, including transportation, storage and treatment.
• Maryland’s Healthy Soils Program has a competitive grant for soil health technology and has a cost-share program for farmers who use cover crops. The department also helps farmers pay for equipment to rotate where livestock graze to promote soil health.
• A new state program was passed this year to reward good land stewardship: The Leaders in Environmentally Engaged Farming program would give incentives to farmers who use practices that benefit communities and conservation.
• Forests pull more carbon out of the atmosphere than they emit, and the state wants to take advantage of that. A 2021 law directs the state to plant 5 million native trees in 10 years. This program is on top of regular tree plantings the state already does.
• Foresters with the Department of Natural Resources work on sustainable management throughout Maryland’s certified-sustainable state forests. This includes planting young trees, which pull more carbon from the atmosphere than old growth trees. 
• Legislation was passed this session to define “sustainable growth.” It’s a multipronged approach that includes focusing on land, ecology and transportation alternatives, among other principles. 

Who’s paying for it? 

• This year’s state budget cut some funding to the 5 Million Trees Initiative, but the Department of Natural Resources said the cuts don’t impact the project. 
• Funding for manure management grants comes from bonds and environmental trust funds. 
• The Healthy Soils Program has $500,000 set aside annually in the state budget through 2028, though money from both an environmental trust fund and from federal programs has also been used for the program.
• The Leaders in Environmentally Engaged Farming program has $500,000 set aside for the next fiscal year.

What progress has been made so far? 

• The Leaders in Environmentally Engaged Farming program, passed in the General Assembly this spring, commits $900,000 annually to making Maryland farms more environmentally friendly.  
• The Maryland Forest Service is projected to plant 260,000 trees this year, and more than 1 million trees have been planted under the 5 Million Trees initiative so far. 

Sources:

5 Million Trees for Maryland; Apartment and Office Building Association of Metropolitan Washington; CalMatters; Chesapeake Climate Action Network; Dr. Donald Boesch (president emeritus of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science); Industry Dive; Inside Climate News; International Energy Agency; Maryland Department of Agriculture; Maryland Department of the Environment; Maryland Department of Legislative Services; Maryland Department of Natural Resources; Maryland Department of Planning; Maryland Department of Transportation; Maryland Department of Transportation Motor Vehicle Administration; Maryland Energy Administration; Maryland General Assembly; Maryland Matters; Maryland Office of People’s Counsel; Maryland Public Service Commission; Maryland Register (Maryland Division of State Documents); Montgomery Community Media; NPR; Office of Gov. Wes Moore; Office of the Attorney General of California; Politico; Reuters; S&P Global; The Baltimore Sun; The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (rggi.org); The White House; U.S. Department of Energy Alternative Fuels Data Center; U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration; U.S. Energy Information Administration; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; U.S. Rep. Sarah Elfreth.

The post Questions – and answers – about Maryland’s climate efforts appeared first on MarylandReporter.com.

By RACHEL MCCREA

As the planet logs some of its warmest years on record, Maryland is trying to make good on some of the most ambitious climate goals in the country. But the state is struggling to keep up with deadlines it set for itself.

Maryland is halfway to its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions — the primary driver of climate change — by 60% by 2031, though progress has been at a standstill since 2020. The state has another, more ambitious goal on the horizon: net zero emissions by 2045. 

Transitioning to renewable energy is another goal, as Maryland aims for half of its electricity to come from renewables by 2030. That includes a significant chunk from solar energy, though experts say reaching these goals is proving difficult. 

Federal opposition to state climate action poses a problem, too. In an April executive order, President Donald Trump directed his administration to halt the enforcement of state climate laws, calling them a threat to national security, the economy and “American energy dominance.” 

Adding it all up, environmentalists see Maryland’s climate ambitions as laudable — but threatened.

“Maryland is not on track right now for either its renewable energy goals or for its climate goals,” said Josh Tulkin, director of the Maryland Sierra Club. “That doesn’t mean that it can’t be on track, though, because there are a lot of positive programs that will help improve people’s lives and reduce pollution and help with the climate.” 

Reducing emissions

Maryland’s plans for emissions reductions are among the nation’s most ambitious — but the state is struggling to keep up with its ambitions.  

A 2022 state law says by 2031, Maryland must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 60% compared to 2006. By 2045, it must produce net zero emissions of the gases that cause global warming.

Getting to a 60% reduction by 2031 would require programs to cut emissions of carbon dioxide — the main driver of climate change across Maryland’s economy — and cost $1 billion a year, according to the state’s Climate Pollution Reduction Plan. 

Maryland reduced its emissions 30% by 2020, halfway to the 2031 goal, according to the state Department of the Environment’s greenhouse gas inventory. 

But the state hasn’t made progress since then. Though emissions vary across economic sectors, state officials are expecting to see a slight increase in statewide emissions from 2020 to 2023. This is because transportation emissions — the largest category — have increased 6% since the end of the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, as emissions from electricity have dropped 10%, according to preliminary state data.  

Meanwhile, the state hasn’t found a source for the $1 billion annual investment needed to reach its emissions goals.

“We don’t have cash coming in the door,” said Kim Coble, executive director of the Maryland League of Conservation Voters. “So that will slow down the implementation and meeting those reduction goals, no doubt about it.” 

On top of that, the state just passed legislation to speed up permitting for new natural gas power plants amid concerns about high energy prices. That could worsen greenhouse gas emissions, though natural gas-fired power plants are cleaner than coal or oil plants.

Coble said she believes the state remains committed to its goals, but she’s pessimistic about meeting them on time because of money issues — including the Trump administration’s impact on climate funding.  

The federal administration has made cuts to state climate grants and dismissed climate researchers. It’s also started rolling back environmental regulations as it tries to reinvigorate the country’s fossil fuel industries.  

“Under the [Joe] Biden administration, they had billions of dollars going toward it, and I would have been far more optimistic,” Coble said. “But that money is in jeopardy, and those of us working in this field … don’t even know if it’s going to get deployed and how, or what that looks like.” 

Renewable energy

Maryland has been moving toward renewable energy for decades, but as of right now, it’s not on track to hit the goals set by the General Assembly six years ago. 

Half of Maryland’s electricity consumption is supposed to come from renewable sources by 2030, according to a 2019 law. Within that half, 14.5% of consumption must come from solar power. 

But the state is falling behind.

“At this rate, we won’t meet the 14.5% [solar] carveout by 2030,” said Paul Pinsky, director of the Maryland Energy Administration. 

At a briefing earlier this year, he introduced a report published by the Maryland Energy Administration, which concluded renewables in Maryland and the surrounding region aren’t growing fast enough to keep up with state goals. 

Experts also point to issues with the state’s system of incentivizing renewable energy. Electricity suppliers can either provide renewable energy by buying “credits” or pay a fine that goes to a state fund for clean energy grants. 

But in 2023, the latest year for which the state has data, renewable energy credits met less than half of the state’s goal and fines made up the rest. That’s a big drop from previous years, and the state said it happened because it was less expensive in 2023 for electric utilities to pay the fine than to pay for renewables. 

A 2024 executive order from Gov. Wes Moore set another goal: 100% clean, in-state energy by 2035. The order told the Maryland Energy Administration to create a plan to get there. 

Reaching that goal by 2035 is “extremely, extremely unlikely,” Pinsky said at the briefing. 

Maryland is struggling to build renewable energy within state borders for several reasons. 

It can be expensive and difficult to build large-scale facilities like solar farms in Maryland, said Evan Vaughan, executive director of the Mid-Atlantic Renewable Energy Coalition’s advocacy arm, MAREC Action. Land constraints, high land prices and a crowded transmission grid complicate such efforts, he said.  

A backup in project approvals on the regional electricity grid has also caused difficulties.

“While the state certainly does have a strong and growing renewable energy supply today, it does have some unique challenges,” Vaughan said. “You find … common trends across a lot of the smaller, land-constrained states on the East Coast in particular.”

Another law sets a goal of 8.5 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2031, equal to over half of Maryland’s total energy sales in 2023. 

However, that buildout is in peril. The Trump administration paused leasing and permitting for new offshore projects earlier this year. On top of that, Rep. Andy Harris, State Sen. Mary Beth Carozza and Ocean City Mayor Rick Meehan have asked the secretary of the interior to halt a federally approved project off Maryland’s Atlantic coast. There has not yet been a formal response from the Trump administration.

Without new leases for offshore wind, the state won’t be able to achieve its goal, according to the Maryland Public Service Commission. The Trump administration’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” passed in July, will end tax breaks for renewable energy projects such as wind and solar.

Adding it all up, advocates and experts agree Maryland is not where it needs to be. 

“You keep on hearing people say, ‘Maryland is a leader in clean energy,’” said Adam Dubitsky, consulting state director of the Maryland Land & Liberty Coalition, a conservative clean energy advocacy group. “And it is simply not true.”

In the General Assembly

While some advocates wanted more of a focus on climate or clean energy during this year’s state legislative session, they celebrated the wins that came their way.  

Though advocates are still wary about the push to expedite natural gas, they supported other provisions of the final package such as battery storage procurement — which would store energy generated by wind, solar and fossil fuels — and rate reform. The package would also stop trash incineration from receiving renewable energy subsidies and includes new solar siting standards. 

Moving forward, “we just have to figure out how we can responsibly deploy as many renewables and as much [energy] storage as possible,” said State Del. David Fraser-Hidalgo, a Democrat from Montgomery County. 

Supporters praised the new solar standards as a way to streamline projects and overcome restrictive county rules, but the standards drew backlash from Eastern Shore Republicans. They asked Moore to veto the bill, saying it could upend agriculture in their districts, but the governor signed it into law.

The package also moved Maryland toward new nuclear energy, which doesn’t produce carbon emissions. Environmental advocates are split on whether nuclear is a boon or a danger, but many lawmakers hailed new nuclear tech as a viable long-term option for clean, reliable energy. Nuclear power already makes up 40% of the electricity generated in Maryland. 

“There appears to be an acknowledgement by the majority party and the leadership that we need to incorporate nuclear and natural gas in order to achieve the energy demands that we have in our state, which is a big deal,” said State Del. Jesse Pippy, a Republican from Frederick County who serves as minority whip.  

Moore vetoed one of the three bills in the package, which would have set up a new energy planning office. Moore cited costs and overlap with other state agencies as reasons for the veto. The office would have focused on reliability and affordability alongside clean energy goals, and the bill drew praise from both sides of the aisle.  

“It’s something that I believe we should have done from the very beginning, before we moved forward with all of our climate change legislation a few years back,” said Carozza, a Republican who represents Somerset, Wicomico and Worcester counties. 

The governor also vetoed one study of the costs of greenhouse gas emissions in Maryland and one on data center impacts, frustrating environmental advocates. 

Carozza said she believes the state should have known more about the cost of different energy sources, including wind, before enacting its climate goals. 

“There now is a recognition at the state level that you cannot just depend on renewable energy to meet Maryland’s energy needs or Maryland’s climate change goals,” Carozza said.

Incremental progress

So, in light of the state’s progress and aggressive goals, can Maryland meet its climate and energy goals on time? 

“I am not sure,” said State Sen. Malcolm Augustine, a Democrat from Prince George’s County who serves as president pro tem of the Senate and chair of an energy subcommittee. “But what I do know is that we’re going to work hard to try to achieve that.”

The energy package the General Assembly passed this year moves the state in the right direction, he said. It doesn’t mean the state is backing off its goals but finding a “more achievable route.” 

The goals remain state law and Maryland still takes climate change seriously, said State Sen. Brian Feldman, a Democrat from Montgomery County and chair of the Education, Energy and the Environment Committee. He was a lead sponsor of this year’s solar siting bill and sponsored the 2019 law that boosted Maryland’s renewable energy goal to 50% by 2030. 

But some advocates felt there wasn’t enough of an emphasis on climate action during the spring legislative session. 

“Climate didn’t stay in the conversation the way it should have,” said Tulkin, the Maryland Sierra Club director.

The future is still cloudy for state climate action, though, thanks to the Trump administration’s slew of changes to federal climate and energy policy. Among a host of other actions from the administration, a Trump executive order directs the U.S. attorney general to identify and stop state laws addressing climate change, emissions or environmental justice issues.

Pinsky wrote in response that the move was “worse than irresponsible” and disruptive, accusing the administration of interfering with state matters during a global crisis. 

Even so, other climate advocates note Maryland is moving in the right direction despite the challenges it faces.

“What we need to do is just keep taking steps forward,” Coble said. “We just keep chipping away at it, and if we continue to take two to three steps forward every year, it is a whole lot better than doing nothing, that’s for sure.”

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Jr. ROTC students from Atholton High School hold the new Howard County flag. MarylandReporter.com photo by Len Lazarick

Howard County officially raised its new flag Monday in front of the county’s George Howard Building in Ellicott City. The design by long-time county resident and  designer Esen Paradiso won a year-long competition that attracted 209 entries from 102 individuals. The new flag was approved by the County Council and signed into law by the executive in May.

“This bold unique design is unlike any other in our state and is certain to inspire us and be recognizable to all,” said County Executive Calvin Ball.

“Our new county flag reflects Howard County‘s natural and human resources and historically proud and future-oriented central Maryland community,” explained Ball. “It represents an evolving agricultural past blended with an optimistic culture, environment and economic future, which is cosmopolitan, vibrant and thriving.

“The arch represents both the historical past of Howard County and its dynamic future. The stripes represent Howard County’s historical and contemporary abundance of agriculture and natural resources in western Howard County and throughout.

“The golden circle represents the boundless energy of the sun, empowering a diverse community, with a view toward the horizon, a bright and optimistic future for all of Howard County. … The blue represents the optimism of endless skies, the hope of a bright future, the abundance of natural and recreational resources. The green represents the planned preservation and utilization of the natural environment, the continual investment in the thriving agricultural economy, and the promise of a growing and culturally, appreciative community.”

The old Howard County flag is lowered by members of the police and fire honor guard. MarylandReporter.com photo by Len Lazarick

Ball honored the old flag but made no reference to its symbolism. It also won a competition 56 years ago. The old flag took its dominant theme from the red-and-white bottony cross in the Maryland flag.

According to the history of the Maryland flag on the web page of the Maryland Secretary of State: “Marylanders who sympathized with the South adopted the red-and-white of the Crossland arms as their colors. Following Lincoln’s election in 1861, red and white ‘secession colors’ appeared on everything from yarn stockings and cravats to children’s clothing. People displaying these red-and-white symbols of resistance to the Union and to Lincoln’s policies were vigorously prosecuted by Federal authorities.”

“During the war, Maryland-born Confederate soldiers used both the red-and-white colors and the cross bottony design from the Crossland quadrants of the Calvert coat of arms as a unique way of identifying their place of birth. Pins in the cross bottony shape were worn on uniforms, and the headquarters flag of the Maryland-born Confederate general Bradley T. Johnson was a red cross bottony on a white field.”

The red-and-white cross and the checkered black and gold of the Calvert family founders were eventually combined in the 1880s as a sign of reconciliation after the Civil War.

Here is Monday’s flag-raising story by The Sun’s April Santana with extensive quotes from Paradiso and information about the design process.

MarylandReporter.com photo by Len Lazarick.

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By SASHA ALLEN

The oak trees on Mike Tidwell’s street in Montgomery County are dying, so he wrote a book about it.

“In the last few years, I have become very conscious of the fact that our biggest trees in Takoma Park were dying,” said Tidwell, founder and director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. “I read in the city newsletter and heard from arborists that this mass tree mortality was linked to extreme weather, triggered by climate change. I thought that was sad and amazing.”

Tidwell’s new book, “The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue,” looks beyond Takoma Park. It examines extreme weather events and climate change happening across the state. And other experts agree that the impact is vast, including on the Eastern Shore, where more dead trees can be found in the “ghost forests” of Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge.

These things are happening because temperatures in Maryland have never been warmer. 

Since the 20th century, temperatures in the state have risen around 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration. But it’s more than just heat. Federal data shows the state is experiencing increasing precipitation, a higher probability of summer droughts, more extreme weather events and flooding accompanied with rising sea levels.

The impact of climate change on the state is as varied as its landscape. From vast forests and rolling farms that line the Eastern Shore to the 80.9 square miles of Baltimore City scattered with heat islands, different areas of the state will be affected by climate change in vastly different ways. 

To hear Tidwell and other environmental experts tell it, the state’s poorest communities will face the greatest climate challenges. Communities on the Eastern Shore — where farmlands are becoming wetlands — and Baltimore’s city neighborhoods are at particular risk.

“There are certain communities, especially marginalized communities, that won’t have the resources to adapt,” Tidwell said. “We just have to stabilize the climate before we face those truly nightmarish impacts.”

The changes Maryland is likely to face are detailed in the federal government’s fifth National Climate Assessment — but the Trump administration deleted all that data from the internet on June 30. However, the Local News Network at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism downloaded the data months ago and used the data as the basis of this story and the accompanying county summaries.

Here’s a closer look at what’s happening to the climate, and what’s expected to happen, across the state:

Eastern Shore

The remnants of Harriett Tubman’s birth home sit in a dying forest in Dorchester County.

“They found the original foundations of her home, and now you can’t even get there because it’s in the middle of a ghost forest,” said Kate Tully, a researcher and associate professor at the University of Maryland College of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

Ghost forests — which are either partially or completely dead — can be found throughout the lower Eastern Shore in Dorchester, Somerset, Worcester and Wicomico counties. These ghost forests result from saltwater intrusion, or what Tully refers to as “invisible floods,” where seawater creeps inland as temperatures and waters rise.

“That’s essentially when the salt burns the tree from the inside out,” Tully said.  

High tides, droughts and groundwater pumping all contribute to this increasingly common phenomenon. Eventually, land plagued by saltwater intrusion turns into either marshland or open water.

As a result, Tubman’s home — discovered only a few years ago in the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge — is now inaccessible.

In the lower Eastern Shore, there are over 70,000 acres of forest classified by the state as ghost forests, with 90% of those acres classified as severely or very severely impacted. For a forest to fall under these classifications, at least half of its trees would be dead.

But saltwater intrusion isn’t just killing forests. 

“There are farmers that are being highly impacted by the saltwater intrusion and the loss of productivity of their land,” said Elliott Campbell, director of the science and research division of the Watershed and Climate Services out of Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources. “There’s not really a way to, like, get the salt out.”

Farms along the Eastern Shore, including northern counties such as Cecil, Kent, Talbot and Caroline, are known for growing corn and soybeans, used primarily to feed livestock, Campbell said. But these crops don’t grow well in salty soil, and Campbell said there is no perfect alternative. 

While there are vulnerable farms throughout the entire shore, Tully said Black communities in the lower Eastern Shore are being disproportionately impacted by saltwater intrusion. 

“We’ve already lost so many Black farms in Black communities on the Eastern Shore,” Tully said. “There’s actually a whole history that’s already gone underwater that we will never get back.”

In the Antebellum period, the lower Eastern Shore became home to many free Black people escaping slavery from Virginia and other Southern states. The tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay helped provide a living for many formerly enslaved people. But Tully said these communities — and their deep-rooted history — will disappear soon if they’re not already underwater.

The Chesapeake Bay region is the United States’ third-most vulnerable area to sea level rise behind Louisiana and South Florida, according to NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.

Because the low-lying, largely flat area is so vulnerable, the effects of an increasing climate are much more intense than in other parts of the state. The Chesapeake Bay has already risen from 1.3 to 1.5 inches each decade over the past 100 years, and increasing temperatures would drastically increase precipitation.

The land isn’t the only thing vulnerable to climate change. Throughout the entire Eastern Shore, the fishing industry is changing. 

“One very clear example is that we never had a shrimp industry in the state until the last couple years,” Campbell said.

Campbell also said blue crab populations, which do well in warmer waters, will thrive. But the effects on the bay aren’t all positive.

Warmer waters will kill fish at an increasing rate, Campbell said. Similarly, an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases the acidity in the ocean water, which can deplete oyster populations. 

As for the Eastern Shore’s farmland and ghost forests, Campbell said the best case for this land experiencing saltwater intrusion is for it to transition into wetlands. The state has a pilot program to help farmers with that transition.

“In some cases, you see marshes forming under those forests,” Campbell said. “But in some cases, they eventually will transition to just open water and you lose that ecosystem.”

Baltimore City

Baltimore City is vulnerable to both rising temperatures and increased precipitation. The city saw its hottest recorded temperatures in 2023, with an average of 59.4 degrees Fahrenheit for the year. 

Increasing temperatures are one of the biggest threats to the city, and because of its infrastructure and lack of greenery, many areas in the city are classified as urban heat islands. High temperatures are dangerous for residents, may overload the energy grid and could increase respiratory illness rates, including asthma.

“The number one killer from climate change is not hurricanes, it’s not flooding — it’s heat,” Tidwell said. “Heat waves kill more people, especially the very old and the very young and the very poor, so very concerned about areas of Baltimore and elsewhere.”

Some people in the city are trying to combat these rising temperatures. Katie Lautar is the executive director of Baltimore Green Space, a nonprofit organization working to preserve green spaces in communities.

“What we want to draw attention to is that if we are going to lose more forests, the temperatures are going to rise faster,” Lautar said. “Forests provide better cooling benefits to the surrounding community.”

But rising temperatures aren’t the only worry for the city. Rising sea levels and increases in extreme storm events could affect Baltimore because of its location on the harbor. A study done by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers lays out the risks Baltimore City faces. It found that from 1997 to 2011, the city was spending $2.2 million annually to rebuild from flooding events. 

Lataur said this is an issue the organization is trying to combat through its preservation and advocacy work. 

“If there are streets that are already flooding with buses floating down the street in severe weather events, then we need to be especially mindful that development should not be encouraged right around those regions,” Lautar said. 

The city is trying to adapt. Baltimore City adopted a new version of its disaster preparedness plan in 2023, specifically targeting the effects of climate change on the city’s residents.

The plan identifies issues ranging from dam hazards to extreme temperatures to soil movement. It also delves into plan implementation and maintenance, detailing key members of the Baltimore City government and their role in the plan implementation. 

“Climate change is expected to exacerbate many of these natural hazard impacts resulting in intense and unpredictable events,” reads the preparedness plan. “Regardless of the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, climate change impacts will continue to prevail for Baltimore City and its people.”

Southern Maryland

On the Western Shore of the Chesapeake Bay are St. Mary’s, Charles, Calvert and Anne Arundel counties. Like the Eastern Shore, many areas in Southern Maryland are susceptible to flooding and rising sea levels. 

“We have a lot of coastal development on the Western Shore,” Campbell said. “Less agriculture exists, but more communities. And there are quite a few very vulnerable communities on the Western Shore and the Eastern Shore to sea level rise.”

While the region will see coastal ecological impacts, Campbell said his biggest worry for the Western Shore, including counties in Southern Maryland, is the impacts both rising sea levels and an increase in high-intensity storm events could have on the communities in the region. 

The region is extremely vulnerable to extreme precipitation increases as temperatures rise. If temperatures rise by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, Anne Arundel and Calvert counties will see 27 more days per year with extreme precipitation, while Charles County will see 38 more such days, according to the National Climate Assessment. These are some of the highest numbers in the state.

Increased flooding could be an issue, according to Campbell.

“If you look at, you know, Baltimore and Annapolis, they have a lot of infrastructure that is vulnerable even with a foot or two of sea level rise,” Campbell said.

Capital Region and Howard County

Prince George’s and Montgomery are the two of the largest counties in the state, and along with Howard County, this region is home to 2.4 million people, according to 2023 U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

While this region will continue to see climbing temperatures, extreme precipitation will remain a major problem. The three counties will see dramatic increases in days with extreme precipitation each year as temperatures rise. 

Federal projections show Montgomery County will see nearly five more days a year at or above 95 degrees at the lowest levels of temperature increases, and Prince George’s County will see just over six days at or above 95. At this same level of warming, both of those counties can expect an extra 31 days a year with extreme levels of precipitation. 

Doug Siglin, a retired environmental professional, lives in Howard County and is an  environmental activist. He has also worked on advocacy projects in Montgomery County and Washington, D.C.

“I don’t think people are feeling the effects particularly of climate change, but I do think that they’re very aware of it,” Siglin said. “They’re very upset about it and they want something to happen. They just don’t know what it is that can be done.”

While the full implications of climate change are not evident to all, Howard County has already experienced fatal flooding events. In 2016 and 2018, torrential downpours of over 6.5 inches of rain in three hours flooded Ellicott City and Catonsville, resulting in three fatalities over the two years and major destruction with each flood.

Both Howard County and Montgomery County have climate action plans as well, both aimed at mitigating climate change impacts and lowering greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, Prince George’s County established a climate action plan in 2021 dealing with all aspects of global warming, including flooding. 

Central Maryland

Two of the three counties in central Maryland — Baltimore and Harford counties — are on the Western Shore. Carroll County is just inland.

Like the rest of the state, these counties are set to experience temperature increases and precipitation increases. And people are worried. 

A Baltimore-area survey published by Johns Hopkins University in March includes residents from Baltimore County and Baltimore City. Nearly three-quarters of the Baltimore County residents surveyed said they are worried about higher costs due to climate change.

Overall, 73% of Baltimore-area residents believe climate change will affect them personally at some point in their lives. This is a stark difference from the 2023 national estimate of 46% of adults who believe climate change will affect them at some point in their lives, according to the Johns Hopkins survey.

“We found that the overall share of Baltimore-area residents who are concerned that climate change will personally harm them in the future is high compared to the nation and the state of Maryland,” the authors of the study wrote in a summary of their work.

If temperatures increase by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, residents will see between four and five more days above 95 F. The number of extreme precipitation events is expected to increase as well.

Western Maryland

Western Maryland will see the state’s most minimal changes from climate change. Frederick, Washington, Allegany and Garrett counties will see temperature increases, but these counties are less susceptible to the drastic changes expected elsewhere.

In the region, Garrett County, the westernmost county in the state, will undergo the smallest temperature change seen in the state. With a 2.7-degree Fahrenheit temperature increase, Garrett County will only experience 0.33 more days each year over 95 degrees, just a fraction of a day.

However, experts said Western Maryland will still see extreme flash flooding as temperatures and precipitation increase. Allegany and Garrett counties already experienced flash flooding in May after a sudden outburst of up to five inches of rain.

“You don’t fully grasp the scale of it until you’re standing here, witnessing it for yourself,” Rep. April McClain Delaney (D) said when visiting the flooded area with Gov. Wes Moore. “We’ve met families who had to evacuate their homes and small business owners now facing tough choices.” 

According to Deborah Landau, director of ecological management for the Maryland/DC chapter of The Nature Conservancy, flooding will continue to be a major issue in the Maryland panhandle. She said flooding and rising temperatures may harm communities and ecosystems.

“Western Maryland is part of the central Appalachian Mountains, and [The Nature Conservancy] has targeted the Appalachian Mountains as one of the most important places to protect worldwide,” Landau said.

She said the organization is working to protect the forests and the species that travel through them. According to Landau, the Appalachian Mountains are a “superhighway” for species movement in the region.

But people, along with the animals in their communities, will also see major effects in the region.

“It’s often going to impact a lot of maybe less affluent communities, those that are less likely to have flood insurance,” Landau said. “And with flooding, it takes a long time to recover. It’s a lot of infrastructure damage.”

Landau said the potential for flooding can be offset, at least partially, through forest protection.

“Protecting and restoring the forests that we have is really going to help move the needle back in the right direction, and hopefully help protect many of these communities that are currently being impacted by this awful flooding,” Landau said.

Capital News Service reporter Rachel McCrea contributed to this report.

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By SAM GAUNTT

SAN MATEO, Calif. – On a cool Friday morning in April, the halls of California’s San Mateo High School were full of students chatting, running to class or trying to find their friends.

But one common sight in high schools across the country was and always is absent from the halls of San Mateo: cellphones.

“When you look at the crowd, kids are not buried in their phones,” said Yvonne Shiu, the school’s principal. “They have grown to value being in the moment.”

Students at the public high school about 20 minutes south of San Francisco have been prohibited since 2019 from using their cellphones while in school — from bell to bell. Schools nationwide, including some in Maryland, are now increasingly imposing such bans, but San Mateo was one of the earliest and largest schools in the country to implement a complete ban on cellphones during school hours.

At the start of each day, each of the 1,600 students locks their phone in a magnetically sealed pouch, created by the San Francisco-based company Yondr, that won’t be opened until the school day ends.

The decision to introduce Yondr pouches was the school’s attempt to tackle the increasingly pervasive effects of cellphone and social media overuse on its student body: cyberbullying, loss of sleep, self-esteem issues and endless distractions in class.

Teachers and administrators quickly embraced the program, saying it restored their grasp on students’ attention in class. Some even said if the school were to end the program, they’d leave.

As schools around the country implement similar cellphone bans, San Mateo offers a six-year track record of how a cellphone ban can force young people to focus and, in many cases, feel better.

“If schools can help alleviate some of those expectations and pressures about appearance and performance and embarrassment, and take away some of those elements that a lot of kids really struggle with and are confronted with, that is a benefit to them and to the school community and the school culture,” said Casey Teague, a longtime world history teacher at the school.

A slow start

The decision to implement the Yondr program at San Mateo began with observation and a trial run.

One of its faculty members, Alicia Gorgani, observed a similar cellphone ban at San Lorenzo High School, a smaller school in the area, and brought the idea to San Mateo’s teachers and administrators.

Adam Gelb, San Mateo’s assistant principal at the time, said seeing the cellphone ban in action at San Lorenzo “blew [his] mind.”

“Students were engaged with one another,” he said. “They were interacting. They were playing card games. They were playing out on the yard. They were goofing around. They were in circles, talking to each other.”

Gelb helped bring the program to San Mateo, which tested Yondr pouches in a few classrooms in spring 2019.

Teague, who has worked at the school for more than 20 years, was one of those first instructors to pilot the program. He said he decided to try out the Yondr pouches in his class after noticing students’ smartphones were constantly bombarding them with notifications.

“By 2018, every kid had a phone. That wasn’t anything new,” Teague said. “But the distracting nature of the phone was becoming more and more obvious.”

Health education teacher Brittany Dybdahl said leading up to the ban, the school was seeing an increase in cyberbullying and drama stemming from online activities.

Embarrassing moments or conflicts among students had the risk of getting captured on video and being immortalized online.

“It basically created way more opportunities for students to be emotionally impacted throughout the school day,” Dybdahl said. “And that would, of course, affect their academics and learning.”

After the pilot program and many discussions with students and their parents, San Mateo implemented the program schoolwide beginning in the 2019-20 academic year.

Some teachers were apprehensive about the cellphone ban, thinking it would create more work for first-period teachers to check that each student had their phones sealed away.

But those checks quickly became part of the daily routine, said physics teacher Patrick Thrasher.

And after seeing the impact the program had on their students, most faculty members got on board, Thrasher said.

“There was such a pretty clear, drastic difference in the classroom,” he said. “It was just night and day.”

San Mateo’s cellphone ban was not even a year old when the COVID-19 pandemic moved all learning online for a year starting in March 2020. But the school decided to continue the cellphone ban when students returned to the classroom in 2021.

“They do spend enough time already on screens that, you know, seven hours a day here at school [without screen time] is not going to kill them,” Shiu said.

The student reaction

Enforcement of the ban hasn’t been entirely without issues.

San Mateo faculty members said some students — albeit a small percentage — are determined to bypass the Yondr pouches and keep their phones on them. Some put calculators, hard drives or other phone-shaped objects in their Yondr pouches. Others put old, unused “burner phones” in their pouches while keeping their personal phone on them.

But many San Mateo students, like junior Lulu Bertolina, embraced the program. She said the Yondr program was one of the reasons she enrolled at San Mateo.

“Having our phones [in Yondr pouches] made it easier to make friends, because I can’t go off on my phone and not make conversation with people,” she said. “It almost forced it — in a really good way.”

For San Mateo senior Siddharth Gogi, the absence of phones made the school feel more welcoming. He said students aren’t glued to their phones playing video games at lunch or distracted on social media in class.

“Conversations move past surface level when you have that time to talk to one another,” said Gogi, San Mateo’s three-time class president who graduated this spring.

He acknowledged, though, that some students are concerned about not having quick access to their phones in case of an emergency.

In the early 2000s, many schools repealed their cellphone restrictions after the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado.

But Shiu said it’s better if students don’t have access to their phones during an emergency. The pouches prevent students and family members from sharing misinformation or flooding 911 with calls overwhelming first responders and the cellphone network.

“In any emergency, we want students to be focused on the adult giving the information,” Shiu said.

The experts

To hear the experts tell it, there’s an overriding good reason for schools to ban cellphones. Cellphone use and social media sites can both have a serious impact on young peoples’ well-being.

Extensive cellphone use during the day has a “direct correlation with a decline in mental health,” said Annette Anderson, the deputy director of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Safe and Healthy Schools.

“We also know that cellphone use late into the evening has a disruptive factor in our young people getting enough sleep and then being attentive enough in the morning,” Anderson said.

Young people are grappling with the reality that the phone in their hand could be doing them harm. A Pew Research Survey released in April found almost half of U.S. teens aged 13 to 17 agreed that social media sites have a mostly negative impact on kids their age.

San Mateo wellness counselor Helen Citrin said a cellphone ban can provide students a much-needed break from their phones.

For students who are highly anxious or struggle managing their emotions, Citrin said, not having access to a cellphone can help as it prevents them from constantly texting their parents.

“That pouch offers a boundary,” she said.

One recent study echoed this sentiment. Independent research on school cellphone bans is limited, but a 2024 study conducted by Yondr found that students saw a 15% increase in the likelihood they received a passing grade after their school implemented Yondr pouches. The report also found a 44% decrease in behavioral referrals after implementation.

Data from San Mateo paints a mixed picture of the school’s performance since implementation of the cellphone ban. Math and English test scores declined from 2019 through 2024, but both the graduation rate and preparedness for college and careers have inched upward. Meanwhile, the suspension rate increased.

Gelb offered an explanation for the rise: “Everybody was forced to communicate in person, so you had more people talking, and there’s more chance for someone to say the wrong thing or be in the wrong place.”

But, he added, the premeditated incidents and cyberbullying disappeared from the school day.

A growing trend

Although San Mateo might have been early to the cellphone ban movement, it’s among growing company now.

State and local governments and school districts across the country are now considering — or have already passed — policies on cellphone use in school. Yondr boasts that millions of students from all 50 states are now using its pouches.

While there is no statewide ban in Maryland, more than a third of its public schools prohibit cellphone use, Capital News Service reported in October. Several school districts, including Howard and Baltimore counties, have passed a total ban.

About 30% of U.S. schools now have a ban on cellphone use throughout the school day, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

That percentage is likely to rise. In the nation’s largest state, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed legislation last year requiring all public and charter schools in California to create a policy to reduce or ban cellphone use during school hours by July 1, 2026, but left each school or school district to decide the specifics of their policy.

Recently, New York joined the more than two dozen other states instituting a complete ban on cellphones during school hours.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) said the decision comes as part of the state’s efforts to protect youth mental health.

“Our young people succeed when they’re learning and growing, not clicking and scrolling,” Hochul said in a statement in May.

A model to follow?

San Mateo faculty and staff said the school’s careful implementation of the Yondr program and the conversations it had with families and educators led to its success.

But several San Mateo faculty members said Yondr alone can’t solve youth mental health issues stemming from social media and personal devices.

The second students leave school grounds, they once again have access to their phones and can browse as much as they want. Citrin, the school’s wellness counselor, said many of the students she deals with stay up late into the night doomscrolling, texting or video chatting with friends.

That being the case, Gelb said schools should also teach students how to develop a healthy relationship with their phone and social media.

The pouches also carry a financial impact on schools.

Each student at San Mateo receives a free Yondr pouch at the beginning of the school year, but each replacement costs $15. In total, Shiu estimated the school spends about $20,000 a year on Yondr pouches.

However, San Mateo teachers and administrators said the program’s benefits outweigh its costs.

“From a school perspective, it keeps kids off of their phone during class time,” Citrin said. “Because the main focus here is education, that’s what the purpose is, and that’s what the use is benefiting.”

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By LIZZY ALSPACH

Karen Siska-Creel, Anne Arundel County’s school health and support director, knows from experience that if a problem pops up in the community, it won’t take long for it to appear in schools.

When the opioid epidemic began to spread in Anne Arundel County around 2016, Siska-Creel saw local fire departments establish pop-up stations to help people suffering from addiction. But it wasn’t until a high schooler pleaded with school nurses and the health department for help with their addiction that she realized the depth of need in the public school system.

“The nurse tried and tried and tried — so did the school counselor — to plug this student into services. And we couldn’t do it,” Siska-Creel said. “The child left, was very upset, didn’t show up for two weeks, and had died of an overdose.” 

Within the next year, Siska-Creel helped create the Screening Teens to Access Recovery Program in Anne Arundel County Public Schools. Called the STAR program, it’s a partnership with the county Department of Health that allows school nurses to pair middle and high schoolers with substance abuse treatment services. Siska-Creel said since its inception, about 50 students have been referred to services. 

For Ryan Voegtlin, the assistant superintendent of student services at Anne Arundel County Public Schools, the program was born from a “gap in service” in substance abuse treatment for youth. 

“It’s not like we have hundreds of kids coming to access screening through the STAR Program every year,” Voegtlin said. “But it is an opportunity for them to get a screening and to get pointed in the right direction.”

How it works

About a day after the STAR Program’s launch was announced, Siska-Creel said, a student walked into their school’s nurse’s office with a paper in hand.

“‘My dad said to either get help or don’t come home,’” Siska-Creel recalls the student saying. 

The youngster, who went to their nurse’s office, was then given an iPad in a private room, where they were connected to a licensed therapist and asked questions about their possible addiction or mental health struggles. The same process is used for any student in the program, Siska-Creel said. 

From there, the student will then receive a list of services, said Darin Ford, the program manager of the adolescents and family services division in the health department.

The STAR Program also requires a student’s consent for their parents or guardians to be told about them seeking services, Ford said. 

“It really creates a safe space for teens, for youth, to feel like they don’t have to worry about what others might be thinking about them. It’s all protected,” Ford said. “It’s really, especially during this day in age, for teens to know if they’re dealing with substance use or substance misuse, that there’s a safe space for them to go to get the help that they need.”

The health department will check in with a student who sought services a week after their screening to see if they contacted the resources or needed any others, Ford added. This way, the program provides treatment that lets students come when they need it — a strategy highly recommended when treating substance abuse, according to Jen Corbin, the director of Anne Arundel County’s crisis response. 

Continuing to push students to receive treatment could be read as applying too much pressure, Ford said.

The strategy — scientifically recognized as the Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) approach — is widely used to identify people who might show symptoms of addiction or the possibility of developing an addiction in the future, according to the National Institute of Health. 

The public health approach is mainly used for youth and is expanding beyond doctors’ offices. According to studies in the Journal of Adolescent Health, the approach is evaluated as highly effective, especially once it is added to schools. 

“When you ask the question, ‘What was the age that you first used the substance? What substance was it?’ Most of the gateway stuff was, ‘I used at 13, 14, 15,’” Corbin said of her screenings at Safe Stations, a program that she helped start that hosts mental health and substance abuse screenings in the county’s police and fire stations. “The conversation grew to, do we need to go back to making sure we’re educating our kids?” 

Origin and limitations

Under the STAR Program, school nurses’ offices act as the safe stations where students can be connected to treatment, Corbin said.

“When someone comes walking in, they’re more likely to grab the hand of the person out and say ‘Hey, I’m ready to get help,’ versus if I go to you and say ‘Hey, you overdosed, would you like help?’” Corbin said. “They may not be ready, they may not even want to talk to you, they may deny overdosing.”

Other school systems, such as in King County, Washington state, have somewhat different programs. There, the Snoqualmie Valley School District administers screenings to all middle school students. 

Families are also able to withdraw their students from taking the screening, according to the district’s website. The same goes for some state-mandated programs, such as one established in Massachusetts in 2016. 

But Anne Arundel County Public Schools are taking a different approach: one that relies on students to seek help.

“There’s a balance in really respecting the student, just like you would respect an adult,” Ford said. “It’s really client-centered and motivated, versus directive.” 

Down to the numbers

Researchers discovered that programs such as STAR are generally effective. In a Journal of Adolescent Health study conducted in 2022, researchers discussed student-based programs like STAR with 26 students in middle school — or grades six to eight — who had received screenings and interventions. The surveyed students overwhelmingly said they were satisfied with the approach, the study found.

Sharon Reif, a faculty member at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management in Massachusetts and lead author of another 2022 paper in the Journal of Adolescent Health, found that screening and intervention services such as the STAR Program are typically low cost. 

But her study also acknowledged the costs of these programs are generally unknown, beyond being integrated into schools that can receive state or federal grant funding.

“The issue is when you’re outside of those healthcare settings, insurance tends to say, ‘No, we’re not going to pay for things that are out there,’ even if they’re sort of healthcare,” Reif said. “And if you want to get kids, if you want to get youth, the healthcare setting is not the best place to get them, because they’re not there that often in the way that older people are.”

The implementation cost also depends on who conducts the screenings, Reif added. Having a doctor screen students is typically more expensive than having a school nurse or other aide do it, Reif said.

“Having a doctor do something is very expensive, having a nurse is less expensive, having a PA or an aide is less expensive,” Reif said. “So it partly gets to that in terms of, how do you pay for it, and whose time is the most valuable?” 

Safe Stations is predominantly funded by grants from the Anne Arundel County Health Department, Corbin said. The STAR Program is also primarily funded by the department, as well as Anne Arundel County Public Schools for its middle school portion. 

A 2024 Maryland Community Health Resources Commission showed more than $6 million in grants allocated toward the Anne Arundel County Department of Health for Thrive Behavioral Health, one of the contracting services that conducts screenings for middle schoolers, along with other substance misuse grants.

“It’s just continuing in getting the word out and figuring out where those gaps are and offering services,” Voegtlin said. “Definitely scouring for grants where we can find grants that meet our needs. That’s the name of the game right now.”

Anne Arundel County has continued to increase funding for its Health Department. Its budget has increased by nearly 23% since fiscal 2023, according to county budget documents. 

Moving forward

About 48.5 million people suffered from a substance use disorder in 2023, according to a survey conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

But of that amount, just about 7.1 million people received treatment.

The state’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey does not track addiction, but it does study drug use by Maryland high school students. The latest survey, from the 2022-23 school year, showed 11.1% of high school students statewide had used prescription opioids without a prescription.  That’s down from 15.2% 10 years earlier, but drug misuse continues to be a grave concern for those who work with teens.

For Voegtlin, ensuring students know where the services can be found is important for the program to grow, while also protecting students’ autonomy in the process.

“It’s just kind of this balance,” Voegtlin said. “We want kids to come, but don’t want them to feel stigmatized about going there, right?”

As struggles with substance abuse evolve, Siska-Creel said she’s not sure where the STAR Program will grow, either. She focuses on the community to tell next steps about the program, she added.

“It’s really what’s ever going on in the community,” Siska-Creel said. “I’ll see it in the schools. It eventually comes in.”

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By Jeremy Cox

Bay Journal

It’s safe to say that Tree No. 160 won’t be standing for much longer.

When a scientist tagged the loblolly pine at some point within the last four years, it was alive. The silver medallion bearing its identification number remains tacked into the tree’s side about 6 feet up from the ground. But the evergreen has now turned forever brown.

The pine’s needles and most of its branches are gone. Its trunk is riddled with insect holes. Chunks of bark are missing. And it has plenty of company.

 

“You can see that there are all of these dead trunks,” said Stephanie Stotts, a forest ecologist with the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, as she surveyed the eerie scene. “You can see clearly that something is happening here. It was a forest. And now it’s no longer a forest.”

Such “ghost forests” are among the most tangible indications of a changing climate in the Chesapeake Bay region. In just a four-county swath of Maryland’s Eastern Shore, state surveys show that more than 400,000 forested acres have been newly impacted by saltwater over the past decade. Those trees, scientists say, are doomed, soon to be replaced by marsh.

But scientists have only recently begun to unlock the mysteries lurking within these haunting places. Like: Why do some trees cling to life much longer than their neighbors? Do tree rings hold any clues? Can we predict where trees are going to die next?

A five-year, $2 million research effort funded by a National Science Foundation grant has shed unprecedented light on the phenomenon, igniting a spate of studies across the Bay area. Scientists have been so intrigued by their findings that they’re looking for ways to extend their investigations beyond next year when the funding is expected to dry up.

 

Such research is critical to understanding how climate change will impact coastal ecosystems and communities, said Greg Noe, a U.S. Geological Survey wetland scientist based in Delaware who is not involved in the NSF studies.

“We’re starting to see some rapid, dramatic changes now,” he said. “It’s a warning. If we don’t like the change we’re seeing now, there will be more of it in the future, and we need to be prepared.”

The climate project is led by University of Delaware hydrogeologist Holly Michael and involves several other institutions across the Bay region. The effort seeks to unpack what happens to crops, forests, groundwater, carbon storage and other coastal matters as the sea level rises — and what can be done to protect them.

Rising seas are carrying lethal doses of salt farther inland during hurricanes and unusually high tides. In that way, scientists say, dying forests are a leading indicator of sea level rise.

What secrets have ghost forests been hiding?

 

Stotts must slog deep into a tick-infested woodland, trudge waist-deep through multiple muddy sloughs (smelling very much like rotten eggs) and pick her way through a thick stand of phragmites to arrive at her research site. Other ghost forests are more accessible. But this Monie Bay marsh, near the mouth of the Wicomico River in Somerset County is part of the Chesapeake Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve and likely to remain in its natural state in perpetuity.

She halted at the spot along the rough-hewn trail where living trees begin to give way to marsh grasses and dead snags. She faced inland, where young trees still populated the landscape. To her rear, there were no young to be seen.

“So, there’s this very visible line where essentially regeneration stops,” she said.

She studies tree rings to determine what happened in the past. Most of the trees here are about 100 years old, she has found. She suspects that the impacts of saltwater intrusion first appeared in the 1970s and ’80s, because virtually no trees sprouted in the “transition zone” during that period. Only after Superstorm Sandy struck in 2012, dumping a crush of freshwater onto the landscape, did young trees spring up again in large numbers.

 

Up to a point, trees are naturally resilient to sea level rise, Stotts said. As they drop needles and leaves over the years, they slowly build up the land elevation immediately around them. Even if the lower ground gets flooded by saltwater, these small hummocks can collect just enough freshwater from rainfall to extend the tree’s survival by years or decades.

The research is uncovering a complex interplay at work within ghost forests, Stotts explained. For example, when trees die, their roots shrink and the ground sinks accordingly, making the spot once inhabited by a living tree now more vulnerable to flooding.

On the other hand, as trees grow more stressed from saltwater intrusion and increased flooding, they don’t absorb as much water from the surrounding terrain. That means more freshwater is available to lower the salt concentration of brackish floodwaters, Stotts said.

“It’s a lot more complicated than any of us realized,” she added.

It’s also happening more quickly than anyone realized, she and other scientists agree. But even that basic information — the measurable pace of change — is valuable in helping them predict the future of coastal forests,

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By LILLIAN GLAROS

A little bird helps Sarah Mann deal with her anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, but it isn’t a talkative parrot or a mockingbird. It’s a virtual avatar on Finch, a self-care app Mann has used at least once a day since August 2024.

The 18-year-old said Finch allows her to take control of her mental health. In the app, Mann can decide what tasks she wants to complete and what reminders to receive.

“Having control over that has been very helpful in being able to control that sort of aspect of my mental health, and being able to be reminded to take a deep breath every once in a while,” Mann said.

Mann’s therapist recommended the app, and Mann said it reminds her of topics she and her therapist have discussed. 

A University of Maryland freshman this past academic year, Mann said sending the “finch” on adventures makes the app interactive and entertaining, which encourages her to open the app’s notifications. Part of the app’s appeal is that it feels like a game, she said.

Welcome to the modern world of mental health care, where help can arrive on your phone. Young people — and in fact, people of all ages — now have access to a variety of apps that can help them get through the day and through tough times.

Yet not all mental health apps are proven to be effective, said Adam Horwitz, a licensed clinical psychologist and assistant professor at the University of Michigan Medical School.

“A lot of them are out there without necessarily having undergone formal scrutiny to determine their effectiveness,” Horwitz said.

A variety of apps

The Finch app is just one of many apps that target mental health conditions. Some, like Finch, promote self-care and goal-setting while providing daily affirmations. Others teach users about coping mechanisms or allow users to record their emotions. 

Prosper, a free mental health app, was developed to find a new way to help people with self-care, develop coping strategies and become more resilient, said Eric Sullivan, CEO of Uneo Health, which launched the app in 2023.

The app includes guided journals, daily check-ins, habit reminders, meditations and mindfulness videos.

Sullivan said the app is most often used to help with sleep, sadness, anxiety or stress.

For example, if a user is stressed, the guided journals can help identify why, while other features, such as breathing exercises, can help the user calm down.

Uneo Health and its partner agencies, including National Alliance on Mental Illness Maryland, received $1.4 million in state grants to share the app in Calvert, Frederick and Prince George’s counties.

Another app that works with schools is the Alongside platform, which also has a website.

Alongside was created by educators, therapists and psychologists in collaboration with about 100 teenagers to address youth mental health issues, said Elsa Friis, Alongside’s head of product and clinical.

According to Friis, the platform does that through various features, including mood trackers, videos that provide students with information on topics such as adjusting to college and Kiwi, a chatbot that uses artificial intelligence to simulate human conversation. Users can chat with Kiwi about their mental health and receive recommended content based on the conversation.

The chatbot helps individualize care, Friis said.

“Whether that’s solving a conflict through compromise or acing a test or any of those daily challenges, the AI lets us make it really personal to you,” Friis said. 

Are they effective?

But do apps such as Alongside really work? Some studies have shown mental health apps are moderately effective in addressing some mental health conditions.

A review published in the Journal of Counseling & Development in 2024 found that when users of mental health apps are compared to those who received no treatment, the apps moderately reduced depression. In addition, the review — which examined 46 studies — found apps used for more than eight weeks were most effective.

In addition, Horwitz and other University of Michigan Medical School researchers published a study in 2024 that examined  three different digital mental health interventions:

• The mindfulness app Headspace.
• The platform SilverCloud, which incorporates cognitive behavior therapy to help users identify and address negative thought patterns.
• The customized version of MyDataHelps, which informed participants of their sleep, activity and mood, and provided ways in which participants could improve them.

The study found all three moderately reduced anxiety, depression and suicide risk, without much difference among them.

Sometimes, however, the effectiveness of an app can be up to individual preferences, Horwitz said.

And not all apps work for everyone, said Catherine Gray, deputy director and clinical director at the Anne Arundel County Mental Health Agency.

“It’s not a one-size-fits-all all,” Gray said. “It’s really got to fit you.”

For Lena LaJoy, a 19-year-old Finch user, the app’s daily affirmations help her self-esteem. Like Mann, sending her virtual bird on an adventure is a motivator to complete tasks.

“It’s a good way to get you excited about doing your tasks instead of being worried about it or feeling overwhelmed,” said LaJoy, a freshman at the University of Maryland this past academic year.

LaJoy said she thinks the app is also a good way for people to learn more about their own mental health issues and get professional help if needed. 

Aroosa Bhatti, a 24-year-old Howard County native, uses I am, a daily affirmation app that provides users with positive statements to dissuade negative thoughts and increase self-esteem.

Before she used the app, Bhatti said she often had negative thoughts. After using the app, her self-confidence increased, said Bhatti, who now lives in Calgary,  Alberta, Canada.

“I was just able to look at the affirmation and it would help me with the rest of my day,” Bhatti said.

Jillian Alston, a Howard Community College student in her 20s, had been using the Calm app on and off for several years after her therapist recommended it, often using it during her work breaks, or before and after starting her shifts at the Burlington department store.

The app has features like meditation and stories that can be used to help fall asleep.

Alston said the app helped her with her attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and to develop coping strategies for her anxiety and depression. 

Jan Guszynski, the Prosper project lead for NAMI Maryland, also said these apps can help young people gain an understanding of their mental health and seek help.

“It is a good first step, and it’s a no-pressure step and it could lead to them, you know, telling adults in their life how they’ve been feeling,” Guszynski said.

Privacy concerns 

However, these online tools can raise privacy concerns.

The apps aren’t always subject to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, and are only covered if conventional health care providers use or produce them. The act, known as HIPAA, regulates the disclosure of patient health information.

Some apps’ privacy policies don’t explicitly say they won’t use user information for advertising, said Erika Solis, an incoming assistant professor of communication and public speaking at Alfred State College in Western New York.

Solis also said an app’s use of AI chatbots could endanger a user’s privacy.

“Obviously, when you’re using AI on an app like this, or rather on applications like this, you’re hoping that it will tailor to you, but it’s still storing that data somewhere,” Solis said.

Alongside uses an AI chatbot,  but Friis said the app is fully compliant with two federal privacy acts — one which requires parental consent to collect and share information for children under 13, and another that governs the sharing of “personally identifiable” information in student records.

The platform only shares information when a student is in immediate risk of harm, Friis said. Students can also elect to share information with their counselors.

Frederick County Public Schools no longer allows the Prosper app to be used on school Wi-Fi. That’s in part because of concerns over the collection of student information and students being able to access the app without parental consent, said Ann Workmeister, the system’s supervisor of mental health services 

Sullivan said information provided to the Prosper app is kept in fully encrypted cloud storage. The app also collects minimal information and does not collect names, he said.

In addition, many mental health apps have not yet proven to be effective, Horwitz said. In part, that’s because many apps on the market may not have undergone scientific study.

“It’s a somewhat wild, wild west sort of thing with respect to how it gets put out there,” Horwitz said.

Apps also don’t hold people accountable in the same way therapy does, he said. A lot of people don’t use mental health apps for a long time, Horwitz added.

The apps can send users notifications, but ultimately users have to hold themselves accountable, unlike a therapy session where there’s an expectation the patient will show up, he said. 

“At the end of the day, they are self-guided, and so if someone doesn’t have that motivation on their own to follow through, that can be a challenge,” Horwitz said.

For Mann, a key limitation of the Finch app is the questions the app asks about her emotions can be basic, while during her therapy sessions she can explore multiple aspects of her emotions.

The app is not a substitute for therapy but is useful as a supplement to that treatment, Mann said.

Emily Pasco, a mental health coordinator for Prince George’s County Public Schools, which has worked with Prosper since 2024, said when a student is experiencing more serious issues such as depression, the Prosper app should not be a substitute for therapy and other care. 

The school system also recently started using the Alongside platform in several schools.

Then there is the issue of cellphone overuse. Supreet Mann, the director of research at Common Sense Media — a nonprofit which helps educate kids, families and educators about technology and media, according to the organization’s website — said while cellphone overuse is a problem, it’s difficult to say whether mental health apps are contributing to that.

Accessibility

Still, some say there’s a place for mental health apps at a time when the need for mental health care outstrips its availability and accessibility.

Horwitz said mental health apps could make care more accessible for those without access to therapy or who are on a waiting list to receive therapy. 

Apps could also reduce waiting lines for therapy by helping those with more moderate issues, allowing those with more severe conditions to access necessary services earlier, Horwitz said.

“People might be able to move up more quickly, who really do need that … face-to-face care,” Horwitz said.

Meanwhile, LaJoy, the UMD freshman, said the Finch app can make taking care of one’s mental health easier, and make users feel more comfortable about expressing their feelings.

“I think if someone’s like, wanting to get help but worried about talking to someone, I think it’s a good way to do that,” LaJoy said.

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